The Big Draw in Eastgate Shopping Centre

From Monday October 5th till sat Oct 10th will be the opportunity to sit down and pick up a pencil! were there from 10am till 2 pm . just turn up and draw!!!!

ok ok Martin, i'm the worst blogger in the world, but here's Sue's latest painting which is very good indeed, in fact my photo doesn't really do it justice!

Michael Jackson painting for Eastgate, not quite finished

All the blue on Capt America has now been blocked in, now the dreaded blending!!

here we go, the ladies from our Tuesday afternoon class hold up their pictures. I think they have all done very well. Pastel and charcoal of Sidney Poitier on black pastel paper.

BASILDON ARTS TRAIL

Have been in discussion with Kymfitz and Kitty about the possibility of

a Basildon Arts trail for 2o10, we have decided to call a meeting of all interested parties

for monday 7th September at 7pm at a still to be decided venue.

The reason for the meeting would be to discuss the proposal and select a steering group/committee to organise the arts trail.

If you are interested in attending please e-mail me

after weeks of blocking in the black, Nicky has started to add some colour to Capt America

Here is August's Bob Ross painting, should be very popular.

Here's one for the blog, Jayne making the tea!!!!!!

A room full of Tigers!

here are the paintings from the tuesday afternoon class, tiger painting session.

Drawn freehand and painted in watercolours, I think the results are amazing!

more Capt America, apparently using a bigger brush helps.....

It's been repaired!

the whose who of the who, Keith,John,Roger,Pete and er....Bobbie!

If you are in or around Basildon over the next few weeks, pop in to see a real cool pop art exhibition currently on show at the Basildon Library. Artist Kymberly O'Carroll-Fitzpatrick's work is on display till the end of July and is well worth a look!

Why not buy someone a 'Bob Ross' class for a present, they are great fun, you need no materials, and you come away with a painting that you have done that looks good enough to put straight up on the wall!

Give Kirk a call and book your place!

Bobbie Fett!

Here's one I done to replace the one I done that became a wall!

Currently on dispay at the Eastgate Shopping Centre

as you can see, thor is finished and Capt America almost has a whole arm!

Over 3 months ago Sarah from the Tuesday night class started this painting of her partners beloved VW beetle and here is the finished painting. Looks Fab!!!!

here's the l;atest update from Nicky's marvel picture, the end is in sight.......only for Thor tho!

As you can see, Thor's body ' as if by magic' has started to appear.

Nicky is starting to get used to blending the colours, remember this is only her third painting.

Methinks Capt America should be next.

Hi Lee, this one's just for you!

as you can see, Nicky has added more detail to Thor. I think the idea is to finish Thor completlely before blocking in flesh tones around the rest of this magnum opus!

Just a few words to let you know how things are going, our business after a few recent hiccups is still growing and moving in the right direction, we will shortly be starting new Monday Classes and a Wednesday morning class, we also have regular Bob Ross classes on a Sunday, see notice area above the sink.
New class times
Monday 2 – 4pm will start on the first week of July, Monday evening 7- 9pm will start the first week of June.

Wednesday morning 10am – 12 will start first week of July
So spread the word that we run art classes here.

We are still gradually investing in art materials. If you need any equipment please just ask and we will order it in for you this usually takes about 10 days and were generally cheaper than Hobbycraft.

The Barleylands committee is hosting a music event over the next may bank holiday please see notice area for the list of bands playing.

The cost of each print is currently 50 pence per sheet, printing for collages is variable depending on the size of your image.

Hot drinks remain 50 pence per cup (only 15 pence dearer than Laindon Day Centre, and £1.50 cheaper than most coffee shops) but seriously the contribution you make to the hot drinks pot does help a great deal!

The exhibition was a great success (thanks to all the volunteers) and it would be good if we could have a spring and autumn exhibition, even though we didn’t sell any work this time it is always worth doing as it gives everyone the opportunity to show their work and meet people from the other classes.

The new changes to the way you pay for your classes have proved successful in keeping the business on track and I appreciate all your support.

Some of you have requested ‘Standing Order’ forms so you can pay for your art class directly from your bank at the beginning of every month. Some have already started to do this, if anyone else is interested please ask for a form.

If anyone is interested in going on ‘Art Trips’, painting trips, gallery visits, trips to the art and design exhibition etc please let me know and we can possibly arrange a coach from Barleylands to take us there.

Finally if you have any comments please let me know.
Thanks for all your support

STOP PRESS!!!!!!!
Biff Bam Pow and The Most (Mod cover Bands ) for all those who dont know them will be performing on sunday 3rd May at Barleylands Craft Village, sometime in the afternoon. Dont miss this!

A great exhibition!!!

Its the April art class exhibition, Here's Nicola from the tueday evening class with her artwork.

We have paint!!!!!!! Nicky and myself worked out the basic colour tones she would need for most of the characters, sooooo..... watch this space!

This painting Mike has been working on for quite a few months now. It depicts the only sea battle between Great Britain and America which took place in 1813, the HMS Shannon and USS Chesapeake were the two ships involved. Mike's great great great grandfather served on the british ship aged just 14.

This is the latest update on Nicky's painting, methinks she maybe very close to painting this section!

As you can see Nicky has done a few more superheroes, Elastic Man and erm two others.......

Ben's 'Joker' he wanted to do it in the comic book style.

The writing in the corner reads"Now lets put a smile upon that face"

Frank wanted a project that would keep him occupied for awhile, what better than the Magnificent Seven!

as you can see it's progressing very well.

abit more detail to Thor

The location looks really exotic, but according to Mark the location is Chalkwell Beach!

Mark has been working on the artwork for at least 4 months, Mark says " I've put so much paint on it, I could have another picture underneath"!

Mark, working on a painting of a photograph he took of his wife.

Our Tuesday morning art class tutored by Maggie.Maggie teaches lots of differant Watercolour techniques, the class runs from 10am til 12 midday

Once the image is in place, it's time for the first coat, as you can see the black (Paynes Grey) is quite patchy, any extra collaging can be done at this point before the second and final coat.

So far Nicky has drawn in Capt America, The Hulk, the Rock sort of hero from the Fantastic Four( sorry not to good with super heroes ) and has just started on Thor! incidentally i know a joke about Thor and Toyah Wilcox! Thor arrives on Earth and bumps into Toyah Wilcox in a club ( why Thor would be in a club i don't know ) they hit it off immediately and she asks him back to her place for a night of passion, he readily agrees and they make mad passionate love all night, they continue the next day and all through the following night. Finally exhausted she asks him how comes he is such a great lover..... and thats about as far as i'm prepared to go with this joke! more updates soon

Here's the painting over 4 canvas's

My new mantra is, must blog more..must blog more...anyway, here is a pic of Nicky who comes along to the art classes with her mum Sandra. Nicky is working on a painting spread over 4 canvas's of ALL the marvel heroes!

she started the painting just before Christmas, (I think) by painting in the orange background, since then she has patiently and with painstaking attention to detail drawn in four of the main characters, i don't know how long the artwork will take to finish but as i said to Nicky I'm retiring in 2030!

As you can see, I am a terrible blogger, time flies the list of 'things to do' gets longer and the time I want to spend painting gets shorter and I still have to fit in blogging. right as for Jimi, tearing alot of the plain white paper from around the image, the image is then glued to the canvas.

Hi, No Life class tonight due to the snow, hopefully it will be next Monday instead, cheers

Tuesday night art class, one of the great things about teaching is getting inspiration from my students and fellow artists. Martin, pictured here is working on a pen and ink drawing of the great Chuck Berry and is using watered down bleach which when mixed with the ink turns gold. the effect is amazing and i'm off to buy some bleach in the morning!

The creative process always starts with an idea, that can literally just pop into my head or can inspired by something i've seen or from a casual conversation, anything really. The idea can then knock around my head for days, weeks, even months, sometimes never ever ending up more than just an idea.

I always have several ideas floating around that i want to paint at any one time, some never ever end up anything more than an idea, while others make it to the digital design stage but no further, a few even end up as unfinished paintings, started but never completed, either through lack of enthusiasm or overlooked by commission work or a more promising idea, forgotton until the canvas needs to be used for something else. Iwould say 1 in 30 ideas may actually ever become a finished piece of work.

Like I said the beginning is mostly done in digital form, the computer is the 'sketchbook' and 'layout pad', ideas, colours and designs are all worked on and finished on the computer.

This is the image of Jimi Hendrix that i'm going to collage and paint onto the canvas, although the picture is more suited to a square canvas i've decided to work on a small canvas 18 x 24. There are many reasons for this, the main one being i havn't got a small profile square canvas.

The image is taken from an old photo of Jimi Hendrix and converted to a pop art style with photoshop. I then print it to size. This can be anything upto 8ft square using a Micrografix program that is really old. probably older than me!

Jamie comes in to help on a Saturday, currently he's organising the new online shop, answering the phone and listening to a podcast!

Exciting isnt it, a blank canvas!, decided yesterday I wanted to paint a picture of Jimi Hendrix from an image i've had knocking around for ages and thought why not blog it as well from beginning to end. when i'm asked how long a piece of artwork takes to create it can only properly be calculated in terms of the number of hours spent on it. The Elvis 56 painting that is currently on display in the Towngate Theatre was put together over a period of 2 years, but it didnt take 2 years to paint. it was just very much (because it was such a big painting 7ft x 5ft) a stop start project, in real terms it most probably took no more than 30 hours. this latest artwork in camparison is only expected to take me about 6 hours.

it's half way through the month and we( Ben and me) are a lot busier here than this time last year we have commissions to take us well into Feb and the art class numbers are still increasing. with more classes penciled in including kids classes, the small but great team we have here are ( Wendy - bookkeeper and painter, Jamie L- website, advice on all things computers, Jamie E-stock maker, online shop programmer and Amanda- all things office), ok enough back to the art class ..

Ben's Bill Shankly painting a must for any liverpool fans

New Online Shop And Rss Feeds

Have a look at our shiny new online shop you can use the above link. We are trying to up load images of all our stock so it’s worth checking in weekly.
Hope you all like it, please comment if you do. 

I have added RSS feeds for the hard core fans of Dean Smith Art.